Global population living below fifteen dollars a day has declined over recent decades
Extensive economic and demographic literature supports the overall historical decline in global extreme and low-income poverty over recent decades, despite recent temporary setbacks caused by global crises.
The claim is specific, empirical, and falsifiable regarding global poverty trends. The majority of high-quality macro-level empirical papers (e.g., [2], [4]) confirm that over recent decades, global poverty rates have fallen dramatically. Although paper [10] highlights a recent pandemic-era bump in extreme poverty numbers, the broader long-term historical trend across decades remains one of substantial decline, supporting the claim overall.
P. Goldberg, T. Reed. Income Distribution, International Integration and Sustained Poverty Reduction. 2020. https://doi.org/10.3386/w27286
Paper 2 notes a sustained decline in the share of the population living below low-income poverty lines as part of standard development pathways.
F. Polidoro. The impact of the global shocks on extreme poverty. 2025. https://doi.org/10.71014/sieds.v78i4.416
Paper 10 notes that recent global shocks in 2020-2023 temporarily halted and reversed decades of continuous decline in extreme poverty numbers.
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Maxim L. Pinkovskiy, Francesc Xavier Sala-i-Martin, Kasey Chatterji-Len, William Nober. Inequality within Countries is Falling: Underreporting-Robust Estimates of World Poverty, Inequality and the Global Distribution of Income. 2024. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4746813
Paper 4 reconfirms that global poverty and inequality have declined dramatically between 1980 and 2019.
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